The 2nd half of the season 2 was good (great even). ...but sadly it lost too many fans because of the bad first season and first half of the 2nd season.
It’s tricky. Part of the appeal of SG1 was it was based in todays world, with contemporary relatable characters playing on a galactic stage. the credibility of that got stretched as it went on, especially once they started doing things like building spaceships. I worry some of the original appeal is lost with a continuation, but a straight reboot of the concept would be very hard to replace the chemistry
The difference between B5 and SG is universe. B5 had a great universe but most people would probably be ok with rebooting it. It was a single unified story that was completed to excellence. Sure you could also jump around elsewhere in the time, but not sticking too close to the original canon probably would be fine.
Stargate has 19 seasons and 2 movies, spread across SG1, Atlantis, Universe, Origins & Infinity. Rebooting that would be... dropping a tactical nuke on the franchise. Plus they've always left that universe "open" (look at Unending, the ending of SG1, they step back into the gate like its just another day), feels like there is so much more to explore.
Babylon 5 is a well made SciFi show and I'd recommend it!
I'm currently on season 3, started watching it because of Casey Muratori's (video game programmer, author of "Handmade Hero" educational streams) series of interviews with Jonas Kyratzes (video game designer, writer of "Talos Principle"), where they discuss the show: [0]
The distinguishing point about the show is that it features a coherent world, where some small detail happening in one episode can come back 6 episodes later. It's also coherent in between seasons, since it was pre-planned as a 5-season show spanning exactly 5 years on the Babylon 5 station.
Also, it features early computer animated 3D art made on Amiga computers. It hasn't aged that well but gets the job done.
Yes, Season 1 is really uneven. For new viewers, if you have someone to pick out the important episodes, then you can skip the rest and come back later. (And you can always skip "TKO".)
Seasons 2 to through 4 are still some of my all-time favorite science fiction TV. The three-episode mini-arc of "Messages from Earth", "Point of No Return" and "Severed Dreams" (IIRC) is still incredibly intense.
The closest thing I can think of today is probably The Expanse. It has the same mix of human politics in the face of aliens we cannot comprehend. Of course, The Expanse has a higher budget and more consistent acting.
In a lot of ways, Babylon 5 is the first "streaming-style" show. There's a clear series arc, viewers are expected to know what happened in previous episodes, and there's plenty of foreshadowing for the attentive viewer. (The original online Babylon 5 fandom kept track of every tiny hint.) Buffy was also moving in that direction, and Star Trek quickly followed.
It's tricky even just pulling out key episodes from Season 1, because a lot of what you need is the character work. You can get all the raw plot elements that come up again later, but if you're not somewhat invested in characters like Londo and G'kar, the impact of later events is going to be dulled.
Your comment was great timing, I've been watching the first season and it's been starting to grow on me, but I really wasn't sure if I would stick with it. It's crazy that it came out 7 years after Star Trek TNG, but still somehow aged so much worse.
Exactly. I felt the Expanse was similarly engaging. The shenanigans of season 5 being on again off again impacted the way B5 ended up, but even with those headwinds I highly recommend it.
If you read the JMS script books, it wasn't that they weren't sure if they would get an S5, it was that they were 100% sure they would NOT get an S5 and he was forced to wrap everything up in S4 or it would be gone forever.
S4/S5 would have been much better had the original plan stuck, but, that wasn't even the primary reason S5 had major issues. JMS was staying in a hotel at some con and a maid helpfully cleaned up his room including trashing 100s of post-it notes containing his outlines for S5. This was the same conference where Claudia Christian blew him off and lost the last opportunity to be on the show -- not entirely her fault as she did not got bad advice -- she talks about this in her book but she thought it was a negotiating ploy and she (and her agent) wanted to raise her quote for the final season especially since it was well known it was the final season and she would immediately be job hunting after S5 and it unfortunately ended up with her off the show.
It didn't help that they had killed off XXXXX (can I spoil a 20-year-old show? not going to find out...) and saved her character.
Keep in mind JMS had been show runner for 4 years at that point and had written most of S1, almost all of S2 and all of S3/S4, something unheard of at the time and even crazier considering that they are 20+ episode seasons each, then he lost two starring actors (in variously shitty ways), lost all his notes, I'm amazed we got an S5 at all and a lesser person would have just given up.
Ultimately the final season was just shot through with challenges, despite it all, I enjoy it. The telepath situation and the conclusion of that was a great arc.
Season 5 might have sucked watching one episode a week but as a binge watcher, I thought it worked out pretty well.
The whole series ended up with a narrative arc like a novel. First season was setup. Things started to pick up in season 2, then 3 and 4 built to a huge peak, and season 5 wound it down, like Lord of the Rings after the ring is destroyed.
I can't think of any other show that has a single narrative arc like this across the whole series. At most you get an arc per season. Often not even that; e.g. the new Battlestar Galactica was a continuing story but the narrative tension was pretty even throughout, with a series of small arcs, each just a few episodes long.
B5 was one of the first non soaps to have a continuous narrative. Stargate followed, and later seasons of ds9 copied it too. Was a great time
Later shows went for a single narrative spread over a season — 24 pioneered that, but before that Buffy had championed the “big bad” each season, although with Buffy you didn’t have to watch every episode in order for it to make sense.
Even in the 2010s the new Star Trek series (Picard, Discovery), and especially the CW arrowverse are prime examples of how poor that structure is.
Stargate did have an overarching plot, but was still very episodic (like many other shows at the time). To me, Farscape was far more in line with the new idea of a continuous narrative.
This type of TV was enabled by TiVo/DVRs. Before then, producers couldn’t rely on people not missing an episode, because if they did they’d be lost. (Not coincidentally, Lost was also enabled TiVos for the same reason).
SG-1 and B5 were both fantastic. The effects in SG-1 age a little better, but I think they both hold up pretty well. I miss that feeling of hoping the VCR or TiVo worked properly so that I didn’t have to wait for the rerun XD
I’m aware of and was around when VCRs came out. They were always a huge pain to use and program. People would make the effort for really important things, but not for general TV shows. Because there wasn’t enough critical mass of people recording, TV shows weren’t made that would have taken advantage of it.
By the time TiVo came out, VCRs had almost been relegated to nothing, as the rental markets had moved to DVDs, and media companies were perfectly happy with consumers using products that were read-only. The idea of recording TV to a hard drive was absolutely revolutionary, as it finally made it easy enough to use and reach the critical mass needed for continuous storylines.
I did. I had a fancy VCR that would automatically skip commercials "Commercial Advance", and I setup a VCR+ program on my computer so I could quickly and easily program the VCR.
When I missed a show (it was rare) I found online review sites that would recap the episode, sometimes they even had screenshots. Or I would stock up recordings and wait for the rerun, and then continue.
Back then TV stations were pretty good about having reruns relatively soon after an episode, specifically for people who missed the original broadcast. They would often do them late at night.
I never really understood the point of VCR+ aside from selling Sunday papers (or whatever day the TV guide came bundled in), since it was easier to just enter the parameters based upon when the show regularly aired. Then again, I used the VCR purely for what would later be called time-shifting. Recording over an original broadcast and ending up with a rerun didn't much matter to me. But the feature to skip commercials sounds pretty sweet.
I never got the paper, so I calculated it with a program on my computer. It was just very fast to enter some digits vs working through the menus to record something.
I later automated it with electronic listings with just the shows I was interested in, that fed directly into the VCR+ program and gave me a quick list I could enter.
> But the feature to skip commercials sounds pretty sweet.
In some ways it better than what they have now - it would fast forward through the commercial, so you could see if it made a mistake, or if there was a preview, or a special ad that was also partly the show (yah they did weird things like that then).
I started watching this series back in the day because it involved Commodore Amiga and Lightwave 3D (both of which I owned and used at the time). Totally agree with you about "distinguishing features". That's what kept me watching it right to the end (including the movies)… As to "It hasn't aged that well" re; the animation, it's honestly aged better'n some other shows from around the same timeframe, although some A.I. upscaling of resolution for modern displays might be nice to see. I'm highly in favor of more new Babylon 5 stuff coming forth…
> It's also coherent in between seasons, since it was pre-planned as a 5-season show spanning exactly 5 years on the Babylon 5 station.
Though the 5th season is weak, because the show was threatened with cancellation. IIRC, each season had an "major plot" and a "minor plot." To adapt to the cancellation threat, they crammed the season 4 and 5 "major plots" into season 4 (IIRC defeat the Shadows, liberate Earth), leaving season 5 with two "minor plots." The season 5 finale was originally shot as part of season 4, but delayed when the show was renewed.
I mean, I'm excited - loved the original. But, I've seen to many reboots crap all over their source material. I don't know what has changed about how tv shows and movies are made per se, but something definitely has. I think SNW has been the only show in recent memory that I've liked.
The two "myth arc" movies, "In the Beginning" and "A Call to Arms" are quite good. ItB shows us the Human–Minbari War – the conflict that led to the construction of the Babylon stations, and ACtA similarly sets the stage for Crusade.
Same feeling here, but in my case I'm blaming it on me getting slightly older (passed the 40-year mark recently).
I'm also looking at past TV series that I definitely liked back in the day (and which I still do) with different eyes. For example, when watching The Office (the US version) I've started to take Dwight's side more and more, while hating on almost any common action taken by Jim and Pam. Also, the more I re-watch Seinfeld the more I feel as one with George Costanza, and even with his dad (played by Jerry Stiller).
Battlestar Galactica’s reboot was very well received.
Personally as a fan of the original supermarination Thunderbirds, I loved the CGI reboot too.
SNW wasn’t release in the U.K. so I only saw the first episode. My understanding is it’s much more episodic, unlike Picard and Discovery which are a single 10 hour episode each season.
Agreed but unfortunately the CW has a very common denominator amongst the content it produces and Babylon 5 does not fit that mold in my mind. Think 23 episodes a season, the entire main cast young adults 18-23 with maybe a few adults as supporting cast, and lots of screen time dedicated to “shipping” different romance scenarios.
I enjoyed Arrow and early seasons of Flash despite being well well past their target demographic but I’m not sure how well this show will in if it sticks to the CW formula.
I loved Babylon 5 but I do hope they change a few things around. JMS' writing leaned so heavily on broad-brush themes and cliches that I don't know if it would work today, or just come off as corny.
Also I'd like to see something new in one of my beloved sci-fi franchises for once, instead of all of them just trying to feed me member-berries.
They main risk I see is getting the right cast. Babylon 5 was overall quite lucky to have the actors that it did. Much of the character dynamics could have been much worse with different actors. In that respect, every new series is always a gamble. Of course the writing is just as important, but given that it’s again JMS for the new B5, that’s less of an unknown variable here.
The B5 Curse. The popular belief is that an unusual number of the actors have died, and many of them in abnormal/unfortunate circumstances. His character seemed older than most on the show (but Jurasik wasn't, I just learned). Plus the actors for his two closest relationships on the show have died.
Does this reboot mean they'll be able to pay to get their CGI assets recreated, and re-render the original 90s-era series?
For those who don't know. The original B5 was shot on film for maximum definition, but the CGI (which was used heavily for a show of that era) was only rendered at NTSC resolutions to save money. The thought was they could just re-render at a higher resolution later. However the special effects company that did it went out of business, and all the CGI assets were lost. IIRC, they've never had the money re-do the CGI, so the best they've been able to do to re-release it is upscale the NTSC (which is far from ideal).
> The original B5 was shot on film for maximum definition
My understanding is that the quality of 16mm film was low enough that viewers could tell even over broadcast NTSC.
And the next affordable step up (the same 32mm film and cameras used for most feature films) just so happened to have high enough quality that we can now do 4k remasters.
Babylon 5 was the shining star of 90s television sci-fi. DS9 was the closest to B5 in terms of scope and structure but it just couldn't hold a candle to it. TNG was much too different from B5 so you can't really compare them both (apples and oranges).
Babylon 5 has not aged as well as DS9 unfortunately. While Babylon 5 had some amazing talent and the better story arcs, DS9 had a better cast in many ways, Avery Brooks and Rene Auberjonois and Michael Dorn and others really leaned into their performances in a way which I think only Mira Furlan and Andreas Katsulas really did on B5.
Writing this makes me sad about how may of the above are no longer with us.
Super happy to hear this, some of the best TV sci-fi ever created are episodes on that TV show.
In particular the Babylon 4 episodes are just mind blowing. I can’t say anymore other than the pay off as well worth it to get through, as others have mentioned, the end of season four which is really the main plot arc fully realized, and it’s quite impressive.
I was really excited a few years ago to finally get to watch B5 -- I could never find it on TV when it was first on. Everyone always said it was better than DS9, which I liked but was not so hard to find.
But what a disappointment -- some actors can act well without direction, some can't, and B5 really shows you with stunning clarity which side of the line the actors are on. On top of frequently stilted dialogue (a JMS soft spot -- his screenwriting book is great but his dialogue examples are terrible) and missed opportunities for humor -- and with those aliens and that dialogue, you'd better take those opportunities if you don't want the audience to take them for you.
The production values have also aged spectacularly poorly, but they probably looked decent on broadcast standard-def TV at the time and it's really not the primary issue.
Which is to say, they can't really do worse than the original with JMS himself showrunning it again. Maybe it'll be a lot better since they have more money/support this time.
Wow, I have a completely different opinion of it. To me, B5 is some of the best television I've ever watched. I like it for very different reasons than any of ST though, they're apples and oranges. Comparing to DS9 is a disservice to both shows, IMO.
For me, that's because it tells a long-tail story really well. From the very beginning of the show they knew exactly what was going to happen later on, allowing everything to tie together really seamlessly.
Watching that all unfold and your understanding of it grow is just fantastic.
My only complaint is the whole S4/S5 debacle, because they got told it was being canceled so they had to wrap up quicker than expected, then got another season and had to re-open all the threads they just closed. Somewhat awkward.
As for the actors, I think they did a fantastic job. They're part of the reason I don't think a newer version of the show could work - you just couldn't have a convincing Delenn, Mollari, G'kar, or Sheridan like they did in the original.
And sure, the visuals of the show aren't fantastic. But who cares? A good show's merits aren't in its visuals, so long as they're sufficient to tell the story.
The production values weren't very good for the time the show aired. It was about the seasons long overarching plot, and the characters who grew over those seasons which were relatively unheard of concepts in TV SciFi at the time.
The CW? Guaranteed to crap. I once got drunk and tried to watch Roswell I think, I couldn't desensitize myself to make it through that. It's almost like they go to filmschool and recruit anyone who gets a D or under to save money on talent. The actors, cinematography, editing, soundtrack how can they manage to mess up everything?
Please change my mind, have they made anything remotely watchable recently? How are they in business?
67 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadExcellent soundtrack though.
It’s tricky. Part of the appeal of SG1 was it was based in todays world, with contemporary relatable characters playing on a galactic stage. the credibility of that got stretched as it went on, especially once they started doing things like building spaceships. I worry some of the original appeal is lost with a continuation, but a straight reboot of the concept would be very hard to replace the chemistry
Stargate has 19 seasons and 2 movies, spread across SG1, Atlantis, Universe, Origins & Infinity. Rebooting that would be... dropping a tactical nuke on the franchise. Plus they've always left that universe "open" (look at Unending, the ending of SG1, they step back into the gate like its just another day), feels like there is so much more to explore.
I'm currently on season 3, started watching it because of Casey Muratori's (video game programmer, author of "Handmade Hero" educational streams) series of interviews with Jonas Kyratzes (video game designer, writer of "Talos Principle"), where they discuss the show: [0]
The distinguishing point about the show is that it features a coherent world, where some small detail happening in one episode can come back 6 episodes later. It's also coherent in between seasons, since it was pre-planned as a 5-season show spanning exactly 5 years on the Babylon 5 station.
Also, it features early computer animated 3D art made on Amiga computers. It hasn't aged that well but gets the job done.
[0]: https://youtu.be/iASsvQ8sX9w
Unfortunately for the 5 year arc, they weren't sure they'd get a Season 5 so much of plot ends in Season 4 and Season 5 suffers for it.
Seasons 2 to through 4 are still some of my all-time favorite science fiction TV. The three-episode mini-arc of "Messages from Earth", "Point of No Return" and "Severed Dreams" (IIRC) is still incredibly intense.
The closest thing I can think of today is probably The Expanse. It has the same mix of human politics in the face of aliens we cannot comprehend. Of course, The Expanse has a higher budget and more consistent acting.
In a lot of ways, Babylon 5 is the first "streaming-style" show. There's a clear series arc, viewers are expected to know what happened in previous episodes, and there's plenty of foreshadowing for the attentive viewer. (The original online Babylon 5 fandom kept track of every tiny hint.) Buffy was also moving in that direction, and Star Trek quickly followed.
Probably my favorite moment of 90s TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv3t86imsDI. RIP Mira Furlan.
I'll have to ask my wife, she hadn't seen either until adulthood.
This was simply because it used all-digital effects in a time where the same budget would buy you twice the rendering time a year later.
If you read the JMS script books, it wasn't that they weren't sure if they would get an S5, it was that they were 100% sure they would NOT get an S5 and he was forced to wrap everything up in S4 or it would be gone forever.
S4/S5 would have been much better had the original plan stuck, but, that wasn't even the primary reason S5 had major issues. JMS was staying in a hotel at some con and a maid helpfully cleaned up his room including trashing 100s of post-it notes containing his outlines for S5. This was the same conference where Claudia Christian blew him off and lost the last opportunity to be on the show -- not entirely her fault as she did not got bad advice -- she talks about this in her book but she thought it was a negotiating ploy and she (and her agent) wanted to raise her quote for the final season especially since it was well known it was the final season and she would immediately be job hunting after S5 and it unfortunately ended up with her off the show.
It didn't help that they had killed off XXXXX (can I spoil a 20-year-old show? not going to find out...) and saved her character.
Keep in mind JMS had been show runner for 4 years at that point and had written most of S1, almost all of S2 and all of S3/S4, something unheard of at the time and even crazier considering that they are 20+ episode seasons each, then he lost two starring actors (in variously shitty ways), lost all his notes, I'm amazed we got an S5 at all and a lesser person would have just given up.
Ultimately the final season was just shot through with challenges, despite it all, I enjoy it. The telepath situation and the conclusion of that was a great arc.
The whole series ended up with a narrative arc like a novel. First season was setup. Things started to pick up in season 2, then 3 and 4 built to a huge peak, and season 5 wound it down, like Lord of the Rings after the ring is destroyed.
I can't think of any other show that has a single narrative arc like this across the whole series. At most you get an arc per season. Often not even that; e.g. the new Battlestar Galactica was a continuing story but the narrative tension was pretty even throughout, with a series of small arcs, each just a few episodes long.
Later shows went for a single narrative spread over a season — 24 pioneered that, but before that Buffy had championed the “big bad” each season, although with Buffy you didn’t have to watch every episode in order for it to make sense.
Even in the 2010s the new Star Trek series (Picard, Discovery), and especially the CW arrowverse are prime examples of how poor that structure is.
This type of TV was enabled by TiVo/DVRs. Before then, producers couldn’t rely on people not missing an episode, because if they did they’d be lost. (Not coincidentally, Lost was also enabled TiVos for the same reason).
VCRs!
By the time TiVo came out, VCRs had almost been relegated to nothing, as the rental markets had moved to DVDs, and media companies were perfectly happy with consumers using products that were read-only. The idea of recording TV to a hard drive was absolutely revolutionary, as it finally made it easy enough to use and reach the critical mass needed for continuous storylines.
I did. I had a fancy VCR that would automatically skip commercials "Commercial Advance", and I setup a VCR+ program on my computer so I could quickly and easily program the VCR.
When I missed a show (it was rare) I found online review sites that would recap the episode, sometimes they even had screenshots. Or I would stock up recordings and wait for the rerun, and then continue.
Back then TV stations were pretty good about having reruns relatively soon after an episode, specifically for people who missed the original broadcast. They would often do them late at night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=VCR_Plus
I later automated it with electronic listings with just the shows I was interested in, that fed directly into the VCR+ program and gave me a quick list I could enter.
> But the feature to skip commercials sounds pretty sweet.
In some ways it better than what they have now - it would fast forward through the commercial, so you could see if it made a mistake, or if there was a preview, or a special ad that was also partly the show (yah they did weird things like that then).
Though the 5th season is weak, because the show was threatened with cancellation. IIRC, each season had an "major plot" and a "minor plot." To adapt to the cancellation threat, they crammed the season 4 and 5 "major plots" into season 4 (IIRC defeat the Shadows, liberate Earth), leaving season 5 with two "minor plots." The season 5 finale was originally shot as part of season 4, but delayed when the show was renewed.
Is this just me, or do others feel similar?
Also: "All of the main cast still around participated" makes me feel sad. Andreas Katsulas is a hard act to follow.
Same feeling here, but in my case I'm blaming it on me getting slightly older (passed the 40-year mark recently).
I'm also looking at past TV series that I definitely liked back in the day (and which I still do) with different eyes. For example, when watching The Office (the US version) I've started to take Dwight's side more and more, while hating on almost any common action taken by Jim and Pam. Also, the more I re-watch Seinfeld the more I feel as one with George Costanza, and even with his dad (played by Jerry Stiller).
Personally as a fan of the original supermarination Thunderbirds, I loved the CGI reboot too.
SNW wasn’t release in the U.K. so I only saw the first episode. My understanding is it’s much more episodic, unlike Picard and Discovery which are a single 10 hour episode each season.
I enjoyed Arrow and early seasons of Flash despite being well well past their target demographic but I’m not sure how well this show will in if it sticks to the CW formula.
Also I'd like to see something new in one of my beloved sci-fi franchises for once, instead of all of them just trying to feed me member-berries.
For those who don't know. The original B5 was shot on film for maximum definition, but the CGI (which was used heavily for a show of that era) was only rendered at NTSC resolutions to save money. The thought was they could just re-render at a higher resolution later. However the special effects company that did it went out of business, and all the CGI assets were lost. IIRC, they've never had the money re-do the CGI, so the best they've been able to do to re-release it is upscale the NTSC (which is far from ideal).
My understanding is that the quality of 16mm film was low enough that viewers could tell even over broadcast NTSC.
And the next affordable step up (the same 32mm film and cameras used for most feature films) just so happened to have high enough quality that we can now do 4k remasters.
Writing this makes me sad about how may of the above are no longer with us.
In particular the Babylon 4 episodes are just mind blowing. I can’t say anymore other than the pay off as well worth it to get through, as others have mentioned, the end of season four which is really the main plot arc fully realized, and it’s quite impressive.
But what a disappointment -- some actors can act well without direction, some can't, and B5 really shows you with stunning clarity which side of the line the actors are on. On top of frequently stilted dialogue (a JMS soft spot -- his screenwriting book is great but his dialogue examples are terrible) and missed opportunities for humor -- and with those aliens and that dialogue, you'd better take those opportunities if you don't want the audience to take them for you.
The production values have also aged spectacularly poorly, but they probably looked decent on broadcast standard-def TV at the time and it's really not the primary issue.
Which is to say, they can't really do worse than the original with JMS himself showrunning it again. Maybe it'll be a lot better since they have more money/support this time.
For me, that's because it tells a long-tail story really well. From the very beginning of the show they knew exactly what was going to happen later on, allowing everything to tie together really seamlessly.
Watching that all unfold and your understanding of it grow is just fantastic.
My only complaint is the whole S4/S5 debacle, because they got told it was being canceled so they had to wrap up quicker than expected, then got another season and had to re-open all the threads they just closed. Somewhat awkward.
As for the actors, I think they did a fantastic job. They're part of the reason I don't think a newer version of the show could work - you just couldn't have a convincing Delenn, Mollari, G'kar, or Sheridan like they did in the original.
And sure, the visuals of the show aren't fantastic. But who cares? A good show's merits aren't in its visuals, so long as they're sufficient to tell the story.
People say the Sopranos ushered in the 'golden age of TV' and I woudlnt deny it had larger mass appeal, but shows like B5 did it first.
Please change my mind, have they made anything remotely watchable recently? How are they in business?
No.
Lore: https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Babylon_Project#The_Babylon...
Skit: https://youtu.be/aNaXdLWt17A?t=21